Building tax data for research: The South African experience

Countries need data and evidence to create, amend, and evaluate policy. South Africa has been at the vanguard of data collection in sub-Saharan Africa with strong and long-standing institutions collecting data for research purposes. Making tax administrative microdata (henceforth, tax data) available for research purposes places South Africa at the forefront of big data research for development and puts the country in a novel position relative to other developing countries. However, making the tax data available was not without its challenges as it required alignment between government departments, resources to be made available in a constrained fiscal environment, and legislation to align.